The Legend of Eli Monpress

3,5/5 stars This took me far, far longer than the length justifies, but I guess I wasn't in the right mood. Sometimes it's just like that, I guess. Also... I was a bit disappointed. So I guess 3,5 stars is not really a bad rating by any means and to me, the around 3 can mean two things. Either the book had some good ideas and some pleasant stuff, but some mistakes made me unable to give more, or (like here), something was kind of missing. The story was about Eli Monpress, a master thief, with two friends, Josef and Nico, and the aspiration of having a one million gold bounty on his head. But this time he needed to work together with Miranda, a Spiritualist, part of a very serious and very regulated guild (church? gang? country? sect?) of magic users. Eli kidnapped a king, things turned shitty, they got framed for stuff they didn't do. Ya know. Part of the issue is that ‘ya know'. I don't feel the story was particularly original. Things happened, it was really short, didn't really have enough room for something super spectacular and deep. Not like I mind that all that much, just entertain me. Here... sometimes it was a bit lacking and I think I actually know the reason. Not enough time for setting things up. Sure, not everyone loves a gazillion pages long fantasy brick every day of the week, I'm with that, totally, but here the world seemed to lack a certain depth at this point. There were moments that I knew with my rational mind were supposed to have suspense, like a to-death swordfight and all, but I just couldn't feel anything, as it was a culmination of events we don't know about. Imagine a final fight with characters you don't even know, without a context. Not very gripping. I think part of this comes from Miss Aaron probably spending a lot of time working on the story in her head before actually making it happen. This is just my theory, but her already feeling like these people are her babies and not seeing it all with a fresh eye plays a part. Another issue was the mistakes. She compares the city to sand dollar, which is a word derived from a currency that doesn't exist in the book. At one moment there is moonlight, then suddenly sunlight without time passing. She describes blue light as warm. She says a fresh, yellow bruise is standing out stark on pale skin, even though A, fresh bruises aren't yellow, they take that colour as they heal and B, yellow is not stark on pale. Some careful person reading through would have picked up all of these, so I have no idea what her editor and the people actually checking the book did here. Not much, I suppose. These things bother me, not gonna lie, especially with books that got out through a proper publisher. I'm pretty convinced that I gave it a fair chance, though, and I actually kind of liked the characters, the way they are all quirky and just feel like total misfits. I'm a sucker for that kind of a stuff and it is the reason why I will most likely go on with the series. Maybe it gets better. Maybe discovering more about them and their history and motivations will actually make me care about them more. It really wasn't such a bad book. Was it brilliant? Nah. So right now I'm not sure how much I am sold on it. Rachel Aaron still needs to do a lot of work to convince me properly, but that is okay, I guess. I'm also kind of interested in her dragon shifter urban fantasy series, because it sounds kind of fun, so we have room for her spreading her wings and blowing my mind. It's just a bit disappointing, especially right after [a:Sebastien de Castell 7390210 Sebastien de Castell https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/authors/1384883394p2/7390210.jpg] and his absolute brilliance. A bit of an unfair comparison, the guy is just really good, especially when you look at how he is working on his first series. All in all, I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading this, it is fine, but I doubt I will enthusiastically recommend it to anyone if the series will be consistently like this first installation. Now spirit yourself away, guys!

I quite enjoyed this series: the plot flows well, the characters are quite congenial. This is easy-to-read fiction well suited to passing the time on a journey. However, here are some things you may want to know before buying:

1. It's about adults, but it was apparently written for children. The characters seem conceived to appeal to children, and they're all sexless. Although they can be clearly divided into men and women, they don't appear to feel any sexual attraction to anyone. This is not a big problem for me, but it seems remarkable.

2. In this fantasy, absolutely everything (including inanimate objects, seas, rivers, and winds) has a conscious spirit associated with it, which feels human-like emotions and reacts to its experiences. This is not really credible, although I was able to suspend disbelief long enough to finish the book.

3. One irresistible force meets another rather too often, which gets tiresome. The characters tend to have some kind of special power, varying from one to another.

4. No sex, but quite frequent violence; although it's not written to shock, and I think children these days can digest this kind of thing easily enough.

So there we are: if you want a light, undemanding fantasy to pass some time with, and you're in touch with your inner child, this may be for you. I was happy enough to read these three novels, as I bought them all together, and they're easy reading; but I think I've had enough by now. I don't currently plan to read more of the saga of Eli Monpress.

When I decided to start reading this book I noticed there was some debate on whether this was adult or young adult. So I went in thinking that it lied somewhere in between the two as some books happen to do. I think the opposite is true though. Of the three books in this omnibus I do think they lie in between, but in between middle grade and young adult.

As one would likely expect from that, you have a very fast paced and easy to read adventure that might have more action than actually warranted. For the negatives I found that the story overall is fairly simplistic, lacking in complexity, and did feel very repetitive across the books as there is a very clear formula repeated through each. The characters themselves while they do have some depth, barring a few exceptions don't really develop much and some of them felt rather one dimensional to me.

These are all pretty big negatives yet, I enjoyed this omnibus for the following reasons. The magic system is interesting as it mirrors something close to animism and I thought the author did a great job with the world building around this premise across all three books. By the time I finished each book I understood the world just a bit more . I was also so caught up in several battles that I could feel the blood pumping in my veins. That is too say the action writing was quite enjoyable albeit there may be a touch too much of it. But none of this is what I enjoyed the most in the series.

What I enjoyed the most was the banter and sarcasm largely from Eli, but some of the other characters at times as well. There were a plethora of instances where I legitimately laughed out loud. This is something I value very highly and the main reason I gave 3 stars. 

Would I recommend this to any of my adult friends? Probably not, because humor is such an individual thing and if you don't enjoy that aspect of the series, I don't think it really offers anything else worthwhile.